Mindful of Your Time  –  Mindful of Your Focus

“What am I going to do in half an hour?” This is the first question I hear from clients when limited to half-an-hour sessions. They get scared and perhaps question the value of therapy with this condition. I have to admit, I felt upset on the other side of the chair as well until I thought about it a bit. 

 

 

The good old days of one-hour daily sessions are gone for many. We may lament these restrictions and feel burdened and overwhelmed by this limitation. But what’s the use? And while feeling the sting of loss or limitation can be helpful, often times it can lead us to feeling like a victim and restrict our use of valuable resources, energy and insight.

Perhaps we can start our therapeutic healing right here, in the hallway of the therapy sessions by reframing our perception, or appraisal, of the situation. 

 

Other Views

Think about it this way. The time that you spend in therapy is valuable to you. It is time that you spend away from your family, friends, doing meditation or building your business. It is your time that you spend in traffic to get to your sessions and time that you spend focusing on coming to term with your “limitations and challenges” that you’d rather not have. 

So, let’s make this time more useful for you by focusing on your issue at hand. Admit to yourself that very often you don’t think about what to say in therapy until you get there. Then the session becomes a container of your venting and lamenting rather than solution-focus production or skills training.

 

You may also look at this as an existential issue: our time on earth is limited. We do not have endless time to accomplish what we’d like to create and leave behind as legacy. We need to focus on figuring out what we want, how we can achieve it, and accept its imperfectness despite the best of our efforts. The sooner we can do this and the more mindful we can be of the limitedness of our time, the more likely we are going to do what we have to. It is as in life, so in therapy.

 

Options

So, what I offer is this. Start thinking about what you want to discuss before you get to your session. In fact, be mindful of your agenda during the entire week. Think of your issue that brought you to therapy and the goal you stated at the intake session. During the week, look out for instances that represent this issue, either as a problem or as a solution, and plan to discuss that in session. You can even jot it down in your organizer, phone, or journal so you can enhance your awareness and your memory. Speaking out your concern after that, to a trusted supporter who is also likely to provide some level of expert opinion on human behavior. This can have a further reorganizing and healing effect for you. Mindfulness of your actions during the week and awareness of your transformational goals can co-create the theme in your therapy session.

Being mindful of your presenting concerns during the week in and of itself has its healing effects. By looking out for instances of your concern you heighten your awareness of your solutions. You may come to understand the circumstances in which your problem is most likely to surface (triggers), your feelings and thinking while it is happening (automatic thoughts), the actions you take as a response to the trigger and its consequences both to yourself and to others. 

 

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Consequences

The consequences are important because they would increase or decrease the likelihood that you engage in your behavior again. If you write all these points down to your notebook during the week and discuss what you learned from it in the session, then the half an hour may be plenty to get feedback and restructure your therapeutic goals. 

After all, your life is your time and your time is your life.

Information provided on this site does not constitute a patient therapist relationship, and should be used under the guidance of a licensed mental health professional. Information presented on this page was written by Marianna Jakucska Counselor and James Meyer, LCSW Lead Counselor and President of Lions Heart Counseling Sacramento and Folsom.